Attorneys differ over ’emaciated’ Rensselaer County boys

Attorneys on both sides of a child endangerment case in Sand Lake where a grandfather and mother were charged with withholding food from 5-year-old brothers offered their sides of the case.

Cheryl Coleman, the defense lawyer for the grandfather and mother, said the children suffer from medical problems and that her clients tried to work with medical professionals to improve the children’s health.

Prosecutors, however, said the children were so starved they grabbed food from the garbage at their school and that their mother, Dana Glasser, taunted them by crumbing crackers onto the floor and telling the kids it was a snack.

Defense attorney Cheryl Coleman said the children have health issues and were not neglected.

“These kids are just two cute little peanuts and their mother was consulting with endocrinologists and other specialists,” Coleman said.

The brothers, who were born in November 2008 to Brian and Dana Glasser, weighed a little more than 2 pounds each at birth. At Friday’s arraignment, Assistant District Attorney Christa Book said they weighed 21 and 23 pounds when their grandmother was granted custody of the boys on Jan. 4. According to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention growth charts, the weight of a healthy 5-year-old boy ranges from about 32 to 54 pounds.

“They were going into liver problems at that time,” Book said, according to a court transcript obtained by the Times Union. “They were severely undernourished and not fed.”

Between January and Friday’s arraignment, she said, the boys’ weight almost doubled.

“Their medical records show that their liver function is back up to normal at this time,” Book said. “Their test functions are back up to normal.”

Book said the children were severely neglected.

“These boys were in grievous danger here,” she said in court. “These boys were stealing food out of the trash can at their school because they were hungry.”

She said the children were so starved that they licked their sandwich containers to try to get more nutrition.

“They were denied food. They were denied water,” she said. “They would cry. They were taunted with food, and it was pulled away from them. Their mother would crumple up crackers and throw them on the floor and say ‘There’s your snack.’ “